Changes for better on horizon for fliers in 2008
— -- Luggage may be no lighter and the gate agent may be no less rude in the new year, but 2008 promises improvements on several fronts for air travelers.
After more than a decade of expansive promises and hot sales, the Boeing 787 Dreamliner should actually fly. Airfield improvements at Chicago O'Hare should cut down the average time of delays. And better X-ray machines may help airport screeners move the lines a bit faster.
The USA TODAY travel staff looks ahead to innovations that road warriors will see in 2008:
Technology: In-flight Wi-Fi starts rolling
Surfing the Web at 30,000 feet in the air should become a reality for some domestic travelers in 2008.
Several domestic airlines say they're on schedule to offer in-flight Wi-Fi service next year, allowing passengers to browse the Web and send e-mail. But 2008 figures to be mostly a year of testing, and travelers are unlikely to be able to go online in large numbers until 2009 or after.
Unlike JetBlue's service, the airlines say their pay-per-day service will provide full-fledged Web-browsing. American's service will be available on 15 of its Boeing 767s that fly transcontinental routes. Virgin America, with 12 planes, says it will offer it fleetwide.
If the test is successful, Southwest will begin offering it on more aircraft later in 2008, spokeswoman Whitney Eichinger says.
Several foreign carriers, including Lufthansa, Qatar Airways and Qantas Airways, also plan to begin testing their satellite-based service in 2008.
Travelers may also experience the impact of wireless connectivity when more of them are permitted to use a bar code delivered to their cellphone or PDA to check in at the airport.
Already used by Air Canada and some other foreign carriers, the paperless boarding system lets travelers show the bar code to the TSA screener at the checkpoint and later to the agent at the gate. Their scanners read it as if it were a paper boarding pass.
By Roger Yu, USA TODAY
Airliners: Dreamliner to begin service in fall 2008
Europe's Airbus got most of the plane-making attention this year with the introduction of its behemoth A380, the world's largest passenger jet.
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